One of the subsidiary of one of the giants in the online gambling industry, 888 Holdings, is currently under license review from the UK Gaming Commission. Information about the Gibraltar based investigation is still very limited but it seems that the review is due because of services being offered to UK customers.
We have recently witnessed a big punch to another big name in the industry, BGO Entertainemnt Ltd. The Alderney based company was hit hard with a £300,000 fine from the UKGC after discovering that the said company was featuring some misleading adverts on their website which in turn also miss lead affiliates and their players. During last September, BGO was contacted by the UKGC, who informed them that they will be performing a license review. The commission eventually found that BGO featured 9 mis leading adverts from period 17th July 2015 up to 21 July 2016. However, BGO where informed about this before the review and they have been given advise to rectify any misleading marketing content from their website that could mislead players. Eventually they failed to do so and they got hit hard.
Looking at the chain of events, it seems that 888 Holdings could be in for a strict check of license review and in a hunt for crackdowns on whoever is failing to comply with the terms and conditions of their licence.
I think it would be safe to say that the UK gambling market is the biggest online gambling market in the world right now. The UKGC last year reported that more then £16 billion was generated from gambling online between April of 2015 and March of 2016.
While we do appreciate the work UKGC is doing for a healthy and booming online gambling in general, we do advise online casino operators to fully abide to their regulatory license and to provide fair and easy to follow advertisement for the sake of online casino and gambling players out there.
We will keep you informed about the development of this investigation and will take necessary action where needed on our toplists and through out our website. In the mean time we have removed advertisement for 888 Holdings in general from our website.
